Iraq Sixth Preparatory

Overview

The Sixth Preparatory examination (locally "Sadis Tahdiri", also called the Preparatory Baccalaureate) is Iraq's national school-leaving exam, set by the Ministry of Education at the end of Grade 12, the final year of the preparatory (upper-secondary) stage. Students split into academic streams after the intermediate stage, mainly a Scientific stream and a Literary stream, with smaller professional, Islamic-studies and physical-education branches also run by the Ministry. A pass earns the Preparatory Certificate, and the exam average is the figure Iraqi public universities use to rank applicants for admission.

Who can apply

Sixth Preparatory is sat by students completing Grade 12 in an Iraqi secondary school, whether government or private. After the intermediate stage, students choose between two main academic streams for the last two years of preparatory school:

• Scientific stream — focused on mathematics and the natural sciences, and the usual route into medicine, engineering, pharmacy and other science-based university programmes.

• Literary stream — focused on Arabic-language and humanities subjects, and the usual route into arts, law, education and administrative/economic programmes.

Students who are not enrolled in regular daytime schooling can sit the exam as external ("khariji") candidates. For the external path, a candidate must generally be 18 or older and at least three years removed from finishing the intermediate stage (shorter minimum gaps apply to students who passed Fifth Preparatory one or two years earlier); a student who was registered in regular daytime schooling at any point in the current academic year cannot also register as an external candidate for that year. External candidates submit the Ministry's required personal documents (civil-status ID or nationality certificate, residence card, ration card) along with photographs when registering.

Exam pattern

Every subject is marked out of 100, and all subjects are examined in a single national sitting at the end of Grade 12. Both main streams share a common core of subjects, with the rest of the subject set specific to the stream:

The exact subject list and the exam schedule are republished by the Ministry each academic year, so the subjects above should be checked against that year's published timetable rather than assumed to be fixed permanently.

Marking and results

Each subject is marked out of 100, and the minimum passing mark in every examined subject is 50 out of 100. A student who scores below 50 in a subject fails that subject and must resit it before the Preparatory Certificate is awarded; the certificate itself is not issued until every subject has a passing mark on record. A student's overall average for the certificate is calculated from the marks earned across all the examined subjects, and this average (together with the stream) is what later feeds into university admission.

Students who fail one or more subjects in the first sitting, or whose school attendance is marked irregular, can sit those subjects again in a second round held later the same year rather than repeating the whole academic year.

Important dates

For the 2025–2026 academic year, the Ministry of Education opened the first-round (main) sixth preparatory exams for both the Scientific and Literary streams on Saturday 13 June 2026, with Islamic education as the first paper; the sitting ran for about 19 days, into early July 2026, with each day's morning session starting at 7:00 am Baghdad time.

A second round for students who need to resit one or more subjects began on Thursday 27 August 2026 and continued into mid-September 2026. Results for both rounds are published through the Ministry's najah.iq results portal, searchable by the student's exam number and name.

These dates move from year to year; the current year's schedule is always republished by the Ministry before the exam period, and should be confirmed on moedu.gov.iq or najah.iq rather than assumed to repeat exactly.

How to apply

1. Regular students enrolled at a government or private secondary school are registered for the sixth preparatory exam by their own school as part of the normal academic year; no separate application is needed.

2. Students who are not in regular daytime schooling register instead as external candidates, provided they meet the Ministry's age and time-since-intermediate-stage conditions, by submitting the required personal documents and photographs to the relevant education directorate during the registration window the Ministry announces each year.

3. After registration, candidates check their assigned exam centre and exam number through their school (for regular students) or their education directorate (for external candidates).

After the exam

Results are published through the Ministry of Education's najah.iq portal. Graduates then apply for public-university places through the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research's central admission ("al-Qabool al-Markazi") system: an online application in which each applicant lists a set of preferred institutions and programmes, ranked within their own stream, after which seats are allocated competitively by exam average against the number of places available in each programme that year. Minimum admission averages are set fresh each year per programme and vary sharply by competitiveness — medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and engineering programmes typically need averages far above the general pass mark, while other programmes admit at lower averages. Scientific-stream graduates can generally apply to science, medical, engineering and related programmes, while Literary-stream graduates apply to arts, law, education and administrative/economic programmes; private universities run their own separate admission processes alongside the central system.

Preparation tips

• Decide on the Scientific or Literary stream as early as possible, since it fixes which Grade 12 subjects are examined and which university programmes are reachable afterward.

• Treat every subject as needing to clear 50/100 on its own; a single failed subject holds back the certificate even if the overall average would otherwise look strong.

• Work through the Ministry's past sixth-preparatory papers for each subject in the chosen stream, since question formats tend to repeat from year to year.

• Track the Ministry's own announcements on moedu.gov.iq and najah.iq for that year's exact exam dates and subject timetable rather than relying on a previous year's schedule.

• If a competitive university programme (medicine, engineering, pharmacy) is the goal, check that programme's recent central-admission cutoff rather than assuming the general pass mark is anywhere close to enough.

FAQs